Saturday, August 23, 2014

Since this a well-known and extensively documented case,
whose details are easy to find in both internet and print media, this post will
focus on only certain aspects. Of 11 murders recorded by Fred West, all but one
involved wife Rosemary. While the crimes of rape, torture and mutilation of
the victims – all of them female – is outrageous enough in itself, this case
has an added horror of incest followed by torture and murder, involving
Rosemary’s 16-year-old daughter and her 8-year-old step-daughter. The murders
were committed in Gloucester, England from 1971 through 1987. It was
through the arrest of Fred for a non-homicide crime that led to the discovery
of what came to be called “The House of Horrors” in Gloucester.

***

EXCERPT: The exact nature of Rose’s relationship with Fred
has also been the subject of much debate. Rose’s own line, once she was in
custody, was that she had fallen under the influence of a bad man who had
killed before he met her and who drew her into his madness: much the same
argument that Mrra Hyndley had earlier employed about Ian Brady. Folie á deux. Plenty of people who knew
the Wests not see it that way at all. Rose
was the dominant partner, they thought, and it was Fred who was hopelessly
besotted with her and did her bidding; did everything just to please Rose, in
fact.

[Richard Glyn Jones, “Keeping It in the Family,” in The Mammoth Book of Women Who Kill, revised
edition, 2002, Robinson, London, p. 476]

***

EXCERPT: Such women are usually highly sexed. Rose West
certainly was having intercourse with up to five men during an average day of
prostitution. On other mornings she had lesbian sex with a neighbour or she
went out in the van at night to pick up other paying customers. Afterwards she
posed pornographically for her husband Fred. Rose made lesbian advances on her
male lodgers and took part in the sexual abuse of her daughter Anne Marie.

EXCERPT: The twisted fiend has enjoyed a string of lesbian
romps since being caged and makes sure she takes her pick from the new women
banged up alongside her. The 60-year-old is feared on Finchale Wing at Country
Durham's Low Newton nick and controls the section with a rod of iron. Last
night a source revealed: "Rose controls the wing as the senior prisoner
and despite her age the rest of the girls are in awe of her.

"The staff look to her to keep things in order and she
decides who is friends with whom and keeps things under control. She hates
anyone in for drugs offences and thinks they are the lowest of the low -
despite her being a serial killer. “She has her own single cell and spends a
lot of time in there with girls she especially likes. She always gets the pick
of the fresh meat and the girls know better than to argue with her because she
can make life difficult for them with the staff.”

Nov. 29, 1968 – While still
married to Costello, 27-year-old West met his next wife, Rosemary Letts, on her
15th birthday.

Dec. 4, 1970 – Fred West was
imprisoned for theft

Jun.
1971 – Charmaine West (8), Rosemary’s
step-daughter, murdered, Fred was in prison at the time

Jun. 24, 1971 – Fred released from
prison.

Aug.
1971 – Catherine Bernadette “Rena” West Costello (27)

Jan. 29, 1972 – The Wests are married

Apr.
1973 – Lynda Carole Gough (19)

Nov.
1973 – Carol Ann Cooper (15)

Dec.
1973 – Lucy Katherine Partington (21)

Apr.
1974 – Theresa Siegenthaler (21)

Nov.
1974 – Shirley Hubbard (15)

Apr.
1975 – Juanita Marion Mott (18)

May 1978 – Shirley Anne Robinson (18)

Aug. 1979 – Alison Jane Chambers (16)

June 1987 – Heather Ann West (16), murdered

May 1992 – West filmed himself
raping one of his other daughters, and twice again afterwards. She told friends
at school what had happened.

Aug. 4, 1992 – one of the friends
told her mother and she went to the police.

Feb. 25,
1994 – Fred West arrested, after discovery previous day of remains of Charmaine

Jan. 1, 1995 – Fred West
hanged himself while in prison

Oct. 1995 – Rosemary went on trial

Nov. 22, 1995 –
Rosemary West was found guilty of 10 murders; sentenced to life in prison

2001 – West announced her
intention not to appeal, while maintaining her innocence.

***

THE MURDERS

1) Charmaine West
(8; born 22 February 1963): Rose’s step-daughter. Killed in June 1971 by
Rose West while Fred was in prison, the motive said to be Rose’s wish to break
links with Charmaine’s mother, “Rena.”

2) Catherine
Bernadette “Rena” Costello (27; born 14 April 1944): Fred’s ex-wife.
Killed August 1971. Rena had called to take Charmaine away with her and it is
believed Fred West killed her to avoid an investigation into Charmaine’s
whereabouts.

3) Lynda Gough (19;
born 1 May 1953): Killed April 1973. A lodger at 25 Cromwell St, Gough
and Rosemary would share lovers. Following her disappearance Gough’s mother
called to visit and Rosemary, wearing Gough’s clothes and slippers, told her
she had moved to find work in Weston-super-Mare.

4) Carol “Caz” Ann
Cooper (15, born 10 April 1958): Killed November 1973. Cooper was living
in a children’s home in Worcester when she disappeared while walking home from
the cinema.

5) Lucy Katherine
Partington (21, born 4 March 1952): Killed December 1973. Spent
Christmas with her family in Cheltenham and visited a friend, and disappeared
after leaving to catch a bus home. There is strong evidence that she had been
kept alive for at least several days. A week after she disappeared, Fred went
to a hospital in the early hours of 3 January 1974 to get a serious laceration
stitched. A knife matching the cut was found with Partington’s body and police
surmise he sustained the injury while dismembering it. Partington, a university
student, was the cousin of novelist Martin Amis and the sister of author Marian
Partington, who wrote about her sister’s disappearance and the discovery of her
remains in her memoir If You Sit Very Still (2012).

6) Therese
Siegenthaler (21, born 27 November 1952): Killed in April 1974. A
student in South London who left to hitch-hike to Ireland and disappeared.

7) Shirley Hubbard
(15, born 26 June 1959): Killed November 1974. Left a work experience
course in Droitwich to return home but did not arrive. When her remains were
found her head was completely covered in tape with only a three-inch rubber
tube inserted to allow her to breathe.

8) Juanita “Nita”
Marion Mott (18; born 1 March 1957): Killed April 1975. A former lodger
at 25 Cromwell St, Mott was living with a friend of her mother’s in Newent when
she disappeared.

9) Shirley Anne
Robinson (18; born 8 October 1959): Killed May 1978. A lodger at 25
Cromwell St, Robinson was a prostitute for the Wests. Disappeared after
becoming pregnant with Fred’s child.

10) Alison Chambers
(16; born 8 September 1962): Killed August 1979. Last known sexually
motivated killing.

11) Heather Ann West
(16; born 17 October 1970) Daughter of Rose and Fred. Killed June 1987.
Heather became the focus of Fred’s attentions after Anne Marie left home. She
complained to friends about the abuse, and when this got back to Fred and Rose,
they decided to eliminate her as Heather now risked exposing them. Also,
Heather was probably sired not by Fred, but by Rose’s abusive father, Bill
Letts. Fred West claimed he had not meant to kill her but she had been sneering
at him and he “had to take the smirk off her face”. Rosemary told an enquiring
neighbour the following day that she and Heather had a “hell of a row” so it is
believed Rosemary may have initiated her death. The Wests told their children
Heather had left for a job in Devon, but later changed the story to her having
run off with a lesbian lover when she failed to contact or visit them. Later
still Fred would threaten the children that they would “end up under the patio
like Heather” if they misbehaved. Heather’s body was found under the patio that
Fred had built over the fishpond dug by his son Stephen. Heather’s murder
indirectly led to the Wests’ arrests almost seven years later.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Contrary to what we might nowadays suppose to be the case, misandric
fixation is not necessarily the result of subjection to ideological
indoctrination. Historical cases reveal that the condition can take hold
without the subject having been influenced by either Marxist or
eugenics ideologies. Indoctrination can, obviously, exacerbate certain
vulnerabilities in the subject – weaknesses of character which were
pre-existent; yet indoctrination is not a necessary prerequisite to the
misandric fixation condition.

By far the most well-known example
of misandric fixation is that of Valerie Solanas, author of the 1967
feminist classic, S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto. In
2011 public awareness of progressive feminist calls for the achieving of
an anti-male utopia (to be manifested itself in violence against
children and adults) was revived by the appearance of a Solonas-inspired
organization in Sweden and by the disclosure of writings characterized
by misandric fixation at a website called RadfemHub, founded by
best-selling writer Pamela O’Shaughnessy.

Writer who “aspired to found a new cult of “arrialsme” which
would be a perfect expression of her hatred of the male sex, whose ultimate
extinction she envisaged by the practice of universal virginity on the part of
women.”

Writer who “had two favourite themes, namely that the great
majority of men were infected with syphilis and that women should at all times
carry guns against the omnipresent threat of assault from the predatory male.”

“Man is but one of a million humble fertilizers. Nature
intended woman to reign supreme.” Marie Petti, leader of a secret
ultra-feminist movement that has sprung up throughout the British Isles, …
voiced this slogan of the new organization.

She preyed upon married men; suspected of murdering 12. – Quote:
“I am an enemy of the male sex. Years ago a man wronged medeeply and broke my girl’s heart. I vowed to be revenged on him
and his sex. I have kept my word, for I have made men suffer something of what
I have suffered. They may say I am responsible for the death of these men, and
they may even take my life for what they call my crime. If they do I shall be
glad to die with the knowledge that I have paid my debt in full. I do not deny
that I have derived pleasure from the sufferings of the men they call myvictims. I have enjoyed every pang they suffered,
every agony they endured. Pangs and agony have been balm to my wounded and
bruised heart. My one regret is that I was not able to strike directly at the
man who wronged me.”

This woman was quite pleased with herself for running over a
man with her car over and over again. “I feel no remorse over having killed
him,” Miss Adams said. “I’d do it again. God and I are tired of men taking
advantage of women.”

A bearded, cross-dressing, 37-year-old bandit named Zein
Khattab Ghanzala for 10 years terrorized the entire Behaira Province in the
Nile delta. She explained: “I began to grow the beard when I was only 14. After
that no man would look at me. So I vowed to terrorize these weakneed male
creatures – and I got my revenge in kidnapping and plunder.”

June Ann Olsen was
a serial arsonist from Miami who, over a period of nine years, set scores of
fires. In 1962 she
burned down an entire Miami city block. On numerous occasions she would lure
men into motel rooms. After they were undressed, she would slosh lighter fluid
onto the bed and torch it. “You
ought to see them run,” she told one reporter. She told police: “I just hate
men. They ought to stop the world – and push them all off.”

A group of feminist women have an ideal “career” situation
in mind that can be achieved, they believe, by making a false domestic violence
report followed by a frenzied session of bludgeoning with kitchen implements
upon the head of a hard-working, mild-mannered husband.

This female couple so despised heteronormatives that they
set up a double date (for double murder fun) with two easy marks, but caught
after one of the victims survived their murderous attacks. His friend did not.

At an event called "Patriarchy Slam," 40 women in the audience, many wearing scissors around
their necks, laughed and clapped in response to misandric presentations, then broke into a light-hearted song about
castration.

No mention of her
age has been located yet, but a photo that appeared in the newspapers has the
appearance of a woman of about 40. The image used here was taken from a
Columbia’s true crime Discovery Channel show, Instento Asesino, which
was first broadcast Feb. 7, 2011.

Her murder career began, as far as is is known, in 1994. She
used poison on some of her victims, all of whom believed her claims of having
magical powers. One of them was drugged and then incinerated in her own car. In
at least two cases, her credulous clients were recipients of letters they were
expected to believe were written by the spirits of their deceased loved ones,
including from one of the murder victims address to his widow.

The known death toll is seven, plus one poisoning in which
the victim survived the attempted murder, as well as at least twenty swindles.
The number being indeterminate due to the dupes’ very reasonable fear of
violent reprisal from the “witch’s” male accomplices.

She was arrested September 1998 (and assigned a public
defender on September 25, 1998), was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison on
September 11, 2002 and released to "house arrest” in 2009, a decision which,
when discovered by El Tiempo,
elicited controversy.

~
Murder Number 1: Carlos Julio
Montaña (Oct. 13, 1994) ~

The earliest recorder murder, that of 54-year-old father of
three Carlos Julio Montaña, occurred in the Fontibóndistrict of western Bogota. On August 15, 1994, Doña
Conchita rented rooms in the home of the Montaña family. She soon began
to “diagnose” her new landlord as suffering from emaciation and offered him her
magical curative.

She offered SeñorMontaña baked desserts and
gave him a concoction that she poured from “dark bottles” (another news report
states they were in pill form), a measure of laxative that Doña Concita announced was worth more than the rent she was
paying. After that she coaxed her patient to submit
to continuous herbal baths with herbs that wold exorcise the evil spirits from
his body.She likewise subjected his three young
children to this treatment.

On October 13, when SeñoraMontaña
was absent, she went in for the kill. The poisoner sent the little ones
outdoors and prepared to finish him off. At about one in the afternoon
according to one newspaper account, she went to her victim’s room and plied him
with liquid refreshments.

When, five hours later, the wife returned she was surprised
to see that her husband’s lunch, which she had prepared for him, before she
left. She went to her husband’s bedroom where she found him, apparently,
asleep. Behind her came the magic woman and warned the woman to let him be as he
was in a trance in which he was put in order to cure heart disease. She then
gathered the mother and children together for a séance for the purpose of
spiritually augmenting the Señor Montaña’s magic cure, oblivious to the fact
that he had passed away hours earlier.

Unsettled by the witch’s eerie incantations, Señora Montaña
panicked and rushed to her husband’s side, where, as reports tells us, he was
found in a pool of blood. (It is not made clear how the poisoning led to such a
result). She assumed he had died of a heart attack with a burst artery. Then
she called the police, but unbeknownst to Señora
Montaña, already made the call.

Confronted with the officer after his arrival, Mary
maintained an insouciant facade. The widow spooked by the events of the day
and the presence of the woman she believed to have supernatural powers failed
to report her suspicions. The lodger moved out.

Soon the widow started receiving letters purported to have
been written by the spirit of her departed husband. The spirit missives
instructed the bereaved woman to put her trust in Doña
Concepción. “Trust,” it turned out, came to mean the witch was to have the Montañahome signed over
to her possession. The widow was about to given but had a change of heart and
turned on the witch, threatening to expose her. Doña Concepción left
empty-handed.

Nebardo Adalberto Guevara Torres,
residing in the La Serafina district,
came to be the witch’s next target. He owned two livery vehicles, a taxicab and
a van. The victim’s brother had told him about a woman dealing in chickens and
salt in need of transport. Guevara was not getting enough business and he
suspected his cars had been contaminated by the salt. Doña Concita examined the vehicles and announced that indeed
they were contaminated and that evil spirits were inhabiting them and his own
person as well but that for 500,000 pesos she could disperse them. She gave the
victim the same treatment as the last: liquids (a foul-tasting green potion)
and herbal baths.

Wearied of the vain rituals, Guevara
decided to just get rid of the “contaminated” vehicles and placed an
advertisement to sell the. As soon as Doña Concita got wind of this plan she
interceded. She said she had a son who would buy them. He agreed to allow Doña Concita to purchase the taxi and van, accepting post-dated
checks for 11 million pesos as payment. The checks, of course, bounced; they
were from a stolen checkbook. Yet Doña Concita was prepared. She had convinced
Guevara to undergo a purification ritual at the river Cáqueza. He went with her
and that was the last time he was seen alive. And it was the last time Doña Concita was seen by Señora Guevara. Yet right way the witch
was to employ the standard truck she used on her gullible hopelessly
superstitious clients: she created letters from the spirit of the dead that were
delivered to the widow. The widow reported her missing husband to the police
and named Doña Concita as the person
responsible. She was arrested, but as there was no hard evidence to hold her as
responsible for Guevara’s disappearance, she was released.

~
Murder Number 3:Haydee Sánchez Florez (Aug. 1996) ~

The con woman eventually changed location toBucaramanga, a major city 186 miles (300
kilometers) to the northeast of Bogota and adopted a new alias,“La Hermana María” (“Sister Mary”). She found her next known murder victim in that
city inAugust 1996, in the shape of a jewelry seller by the name of Haydee Sánchez Florez. He business was doing
poorly and she wanted to rid it of “bad energy.” Sister Mary gave her the usual
prescription: spiritual spells, curative baths and green-colored magic potions.
The witch soon, drugged her victim with benzodiacepina sleeping pills, scooped up her goods and drove her, in the
drugged woman’s own car, to a secluded spot doused the jewelry seller with
gasoline and lit the fuel, burning her to death.

~
Murder Number 4: Helena Cáceres González (1997) ~

Ladino next performed her magic on
an elderly couple living in Ciudad Jardín del Norte de Bogotá. She
grabbed 15 million pesos and the wife disappeared. Her corpse was found in the río Amarillo.

~
Multiple Swindles in Ciudad
Jardín del Norte de Bogotá(1997) ~

It was learned later, after Ladino had been indicted for
multiple murders that in Ciudad Jardín del Norte de Bogotá during this time
period that Ladino had defrauded an additional 20 persons. This fact was
discovered through telephone calls made to newspaper reporters of El Tiempo who stated that the victims
never reported the crimes “for fear that behind it is
an organization that could threaten their lives.” El Tiempo did not, at least in articles found by this researcher,
did not name the “organization,” but referred to “gunmen friends ofDoña Concepcion
riding around the city in taxis.” Yet once it is learned (from U. S. court
filings) that the organization was the FARC guerrilla communist group the fears
prove to have been well-substantiated.

~
Attempted murder: Name
unknown ~

Back in the center of Bogota proper she made friends with a
woman (at number 17 on calle 19) she learned had
saved up 3 million pesos. Ladino poisoned her with scopolamine
placed one of her potions yet the victim’s constitution was robust and
she survived the attempt on her life. When the victim recovered consciousness
her assailant threats cowed her into silence so the crime remained, until
much, later unreported.

~
Triple murder: The Bello Clavijo sisters (Oct.? 1997) ~

In early 1997, María Concepción
Ladino exploited the painful illness of a dying woman in order to prey upon the
old woman’s three daughters Bello Clavijo, Elsa Clara, Luz Stella and Ana
Lucia. The lady was suffering from neck cancer and the worried young ladies
looked at the magical lady as a possible savior.

Yet Dona Conchita’s potions were of
no avail and her patient expired, leaving to the three the a 13 million peso
inheritance, which a spoil which the wicked “healer” concentrated her energies.After going through the motions of assuaging the grief
over the death of their beloved mother, the three girls were persuaded to
invest their inheritance in a magical procedure which Dona Conchita assured
them would, in less than four months, double their money.

A month later, she locked himself in
a room of the house of the sisters and instructed them to deposit their
inheritance money in a chest, and invoked the powers of the spirit world with
magical prayers. The cheat was placed under a bed and the credulous girls were
then warned that under no circumstanced should they open it.

Following this base theatrical
performance, the woman offered to serve as a spirit medium so that the Bello
sisters might communicate with the soul of their deceased mother.The result was that girls received more than fifteen letters,
which were supposed to have been written by the dear departed, and which
announced to the motherless girls that Mrs. Concepcion was to be received as
their new mother.

After three months however, the
faith of one of the girls was waning, and doubting the witchcraft she disobeyed
orders, and peering into the chest found not a multiplication of the original
13 million, but merely four 10,000 peso notes.

To mollify the three furious Bollas,
Dona Conchita reassured them by disclosing the wondrous fact only she could –
due to her special powers – see the invisible banknotes and, to reassure the
suspicious orphans, she offered to conduct a special purification rite in order
make their eyes pure enough to see that which was unseen. The ritual was to
occur at a natural water source. With this pretext, the girls were led a stream
of the Sabana de Bogotá where, with the assistance of two hired killers, they
were pummeled to death with stones.

Yet there was a surviving brother,
Santiago Bello Clavijo, who immediately
instigated an investigation.

Court records from Clavijo’s plea for asylum in the United
States, explain the specifics of the “organization” and the gunman friends”
that the newspapers so gingerly reported:

“Clavijo is a native and citizen of Colombia. In August
1998, Clavijo’s three sisters were murdered in Colombia after they refused to
make extortionate payments to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(“FARC”). Clavijo began assisting Colombian authorities with the investigation
into his sisters’ murders. Two days after the murders, Clavijo’s brother
received a telephone call from an individual who identified himself as a member
of the FARC. The caller threatened to kill Clavijo if he continued to assist
with the murder investigation. Clavijo continued to assist the police and
continued to receive telephone death threats from the FARC.” [United States
Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. CLAVIJO v. U.S. ATT. GEN.No. 07-10042 Non-Argument Calendar. (11th
Cir. Aug. 13, 2007)]

***

María Concepción Ladino Gutiérrez was arrested in August
1998. Two of her male accomplices were also captured. She was briefly
hospitalized on the 30th of that month after a what appeared to be a suicide
attempt. She was brought before the court on September 6th and assigned a public defender on the
25th. The process dragged on, resulting in a trial on multiple charges, ending
on September 11, 2002, when the Criminal Court 52 in the Bogota Circuit
sentenced Ladino to 40 years in prison fined her $30,000.

In
2009, Ladino was released from prison and placed under “house arrest” as part
of a furlough program, with an explanation that the decision was due to medical
considerations. The newspaper registered strong complaints about this, and
other cases, of violent criminals receiving lenient treatment.

***

NOTE:
This narrative has been patched together from various, sometimes sketchy,
sources. It will be checked for accuracy of dates, some of which had to be
inferred, as well as other details when additional sources become available.

Q. Was the phenomenon of the serial killer “baby farmer”
primarily (as I read on Wikipedia) a British Victorian one?

A. Not at all. Baby farmer serial killers are known well
before the 19th century. Many cases can be found in Europe, Russia,
Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. The most prolific of these female
child-murderers known so far are Mrs. Holmen (a serial killer couple, 1906,
Sweden) and Madame Kusnezowa (1913, Russia).

Q: I read that most female serial killers have male
accomplices. Is this true?

A: Not in the least. Only a fraction of female serial
killers have male accomplices. Despite efforts to argue otherwise, the fact is
that in many serial killer couple cases involving brutality and sexual
perversion it is the female member who is psychologically dominant, as with
Judith Neelley (1982, southern USA) and Karla Homolka (1985, Canada).

***

►
Question #8

Q. But it is true that female serial killers almost always
target members oftheir intimate circle,
isn’t it?

A: No. Perhaps a majority do, however. Yet there is a very
large share that do not fit this stereotype. “Ogresses” frequently murder the
children of strangers. Female Serial Killer Bandits target strangers,
obviously.

***

►
Question #9

Q: Is it true that female serial killers almost never target
strangers of the female sex?

No. The claim is untrue. Here are some examples of female
serial killers who targeted women who were not part of their intimate circle:

Q. It is often said material necessity or greed or
self-defense is the real motive of female serial killers. It this accurate?

A. It is true that a huge share of female serial killers
make some material profit (money or property) from their murders, yet it is a
mistake to see this as the deepest motive.

“[There is] only one reason why a woman would, over the span
of years, kill off the people closest to her, one by one, in ways that are
guaranteed to make them undergo terrible suffering: because she gets pleasure
from doing it.” [Harold Schechter, Fatal,
2003]

***

►
Question #11

Q: What on earth is a “Champion Black Widow Serial Killer”?

A: Women who have murdered (or attempted to murder) four or
more husbands (or paramours).

Experts have claimed that the incidence of female serial
killer cases greatly increased in the last few decades of the 20th century.
Is this true?

No. The claim is based on the false assumption that the
cases the criminologists making this claim devoted their attention to represented
an accurate representation of historical cases (meaning cases that occurred
before the phenomenon came to be seriously studied during the late twentieth
century).